Sam Kaye
She was innocent, playing in her parents compound at home when the insurgent Boko Haram stormed Gwoza, killed her father and took her, her mother and sister hostage. She was just going to 13 then when she was dragged into the Sambisa by insurgents. Her teenage life was cut short and she became an instant sex slave. After about three to four years in the bush with the insurgents, she is lucky to be alive to tell the story
Four years after, Auta Musa is still a teenager at 17 with a child. Looking at her, it’s obvious she has missed childhood and is struggling to play mum to her only surviving daughter out of a set of twins she got from a forceful relationship in the Sambisa where she was dragged into when the insurgents conquered Gwoza council area of Borno state, killed their traditional ruler Shehu Idrissa Timpta and dared to announce to the world that their Caliphate will be operating from that Gwoza.
How she became a sex slave to the Boko Haram insurgents?
Many souls had perished in 2014 when they took over Gwoza town and established a caliphate where the late Shekau had announced that he would rule the region from there. Auta was lucky that in those days of such tragedies, women were given special preferences over men whom they killed ruthlessly. If they could enter the palace to get the wife and kids of the traditional ruler then Auta was a little fry for them because behind the facade of religion were dangerous sex perverts who cared very little about humanity.
In the sambisa forest or Mandara mountains overlooking the headquarters of Gwoza area or Pulka, any one found within the jungle is ruled by their laws. So all the men are shared by the commanders if they are fit to fight and girls like Auta are married off by their own jungle laws to boko haram commanders. That is if you are not attractive enough to warrant Shekau himself to add you into his harem of women when he was alive.
Hear her: “so I was married off to one of the commanders at 13. So by 14, I was already a mother of twins. But the laws of the jungle is harsh. The maternity facilities are non existent. We had to struggle to survive the very hard way. Especially when the father of my girls is off into the savanna to fight for their cause.
“I lost contact with my mother so I cannot tell you where she is now. Who knows maybe she is one of those they gathered at the center of Gwoza, shot them for no just cause and threw them down the big well at the correctional centre in Gwoza. I cannot vow that she would be either in the sambisa or in the caves of the mandara mountains. ” said Auta.
On how she escaped the dare devil desperate insurgents, Auta said that she had heard about the numerous miraculous escape of some Chibok girls. And being a resident of Gwoza it was easy to decipher z where home was.
” The truth is that from top of those hills, we can see a lot of activities going on in Gwoza. Except of course if we relocate to the other side where you find limankara and other small villages leading to Adamawa.” Well it was easy. I was alone with my twins. And their father had gone war mongering. So I figured out that I was not being watched. So I took the girls and with some others having the same goal, left their camp and started running aimlessly into the savanna. We were lucky we did not step on any IED or bump into any of the amirs.
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” while meandering through the savanna, one of my girls fell ill and died. I struggled with the second one because we were not having proper nutrition in the bush. I held on to the second one because we couldn’t spot any community for hours until we came across one old woman who gave us the correct geographic locations
“That was how I lost my second child but I thank God for mercies the surviving one is doing fine. I got my escape and now I am free”
